How Clutter Is Impacting Your Life!
You’ve seen the social media memes that suggest clutter is good because it’s a sign of creativity. For a few minutes, the memes make you smile and let you know that you aren’t the only person with a clutter problem. However, the truth is that clutter is not a sign of creativity or of productivity. It’s a sign of disorganization, procrastination, lack of control, and sometimes a lack of value or respect. Clutter can even cause problems you may not even be aware of.
Maybe you think it’s just not that bad, it’s just a little clutter, and a little messy but it’s not hurting anything. The fact is that clutter can wreak havoc with your physical, mental, and financial health.
Increases Mental Problems
The clutter and disorganization around you are ruining your focus. It becomes hard to concentrate due to having to deal with the mess and thoughts that are continually popping up interrupting your flow. The exciting thing is that science is discovering that in some cases the clutter came before the mental illness. This means that there may be a cure.
Induces anxiety – Obsessions with the Past – Clutter is closely tied to an inability to let go of the past.
Risk of becoming a Hoarder – While not all people who have clutter become hoarders, it can happen.
Chicken or Egg – People with lots of clutter physically also have lots of clutter mentally that makes life, in general, feel messy and out of control. Usually when the clutter is cleared their outlook improves, and their mind becomes clearer.
Ruins Your Diet
When the house is dirty, the car is a wreck, and you’re running on fumes, it’s not shocking that you’re not making good food choices. It seems too hard to plan grocery shopping, cooking time, and so forth when it’s all so cluttered that you cannot find your kitchen table and your oven is full of dirty dishes.
Junk & Fast Food Seems Easy to Grab
Stress Hormones Make You Hungry
Guilt Makes You Do Unhealthy Things
Guilty feelings for not doing a good enough job taking care of your home and office clutter can cause you to stuff your feelings with eating
Causes Respiratory Issues
Dust mites cause allergies and illness.
Is Not Safe
One of the saddest and most preventable injuries among the elderly and those who live alone is falling. Most falling can be prevented if you keep the paths clear and clutter free. Collections of papers stored in rooms, attics, and crawl spaces create severe fire hazards.
Weakens Relationships
The clutter, whether it’s mental clutter or physical clutter can get in the way of experiencing true downtime and relaxation with the people in your life. Living in chaos, the mood level in the home will not be positive. The negativity will cause every relationship to suffer. Is it time for a family meeting?
Decreases Productivity
If you have to do an hour of reorganizing just to get something done, the clutter will contribute to procrastination, causing your productivity level to dwindle to nothing.
Inability to Meet Deadlines – If you cannot find things, it can be hard to meet your deadlines. If you cannot meet deadlines, it can adversely affect your business or career.
Lack of Motivation – Even just walking in a room and seeing the clutter can be demotivating. All the things bombard your mind and cause confusion
Can’t Find Stuff – One of the most significant factors in reduced productivity is just not being able to find stuff. If you cannot find your assignment, important research documents, your frying pan – whatever it is that you needed to complete a task it causes costly delays and reduces your productivity. Everyone has the same hours in a day, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you’ve allowed your home and/or office to get so cluttered. Clutter can really drag you down and make you feel like giving up.
Encourages Bad Money Management
Clutter can cause so much destruction if you’re not careful. You will end up spending more money on replacing “lost” items or buying something you already own because you forgot that you own it since you cannot find it. If you’re always forgetting that certain bills are due, it can be very costly to you. If you’re so cluttered in your mind and space that you cannot keep track of time, it’s likely that you’re also not balancing your bank account regularly
Rebuying Things You Already Own – This is something a lot of people who have a lot of clutter end up doing. They either forget they own something and buy another one because they like it, or they go out and buy another one because they cannot find the one that they know they own.
Clutter is Bad for The Environment
One of the main culprits of clutter is overconsumption. People have garages so full of stuff that they don’t use that they cannot put their cars inside.
Next Step
As you can see, clutter in your environment has adverse effects on every aspect of your life. It affects your mental health and your physical safety when it decreases productivity, stresses relationships, and has a negative impact on your financial future. It even affects the physical environment due to poor or inaccurate decision-making and overconsumption.
What area of your life is impacted by clutter?
What is one action you can take today to start to clear your clutter?
Share in the comments below.